Tim Tebow: The NFL Draft and the Cycle of Fame

In just four years, Tim Tebow has transformed from an unknown (nationally, anyway), to messiah, and now pariah. He’s a microcosm for fame in the United States. When he was new to the scene, Florida fans were dying to see him play. First, he is from Florida, so that helped. Second, he was one of the top QB recruits in the country and Florida’s high school player of the year, and was tailor made to run Urban Meyer’s offense (unlike the incumbent, Chris Leak). He was adored before he set foot on campus just because of what people heard about him; his reputation as a football player preceded him.

Stage One: Introduction
He was introduced to most fans of college football nationally in the title game when Florida buried Ohio State. At the time, I didn’t understand what the fuss was all about because when Tebow entered the game, all he did was line up in the shotgun, receive the snap, and run straight ahead. I though, “If that’s all they’re going to do with him, why not just have a running back take the ball?” He only threw 33 passes his entire freshman year for 358 yards and 5 TDs compared to 89 rushes for 469 yards and 8 TDs. I wondered if he was just a runner or if that’s just the way that Meyer deployed him, turns out Meyer knew what he was doing. Perhaps Tebow wasn’t ready to handle the entire offense yet; Meyer just knew how to best use him that year. His percentage split for run to pass each year is: Freshman: 73 percent run, 27 percent pass; Sophomore: 63 percent pass; Junior: 37 percent run; 63 percent pass, 37 percent run; Senior: 59 percent pass, 41 percent run).

Stage Two: Ascendancy
After his freshman season and sometime during his run at the Heisman during his sophomore year, he became mythical. People (fans and media) began to drink from the Cup of Tebow (you pick which cup, because plenty of both was going on). We began to learn of his exploits on the field (outstanding and unquestionable), of his faith (devout and unwavering), his charity work (abundant and commendable), and his general leadership abilities (Army General/CEO-esque). At this point, he’d reached the apex of his goodwill and power. He wasn’t new anymore, but many people hadn’t been introduced to him yet. And when people found out about him, they liked him. He hadn’t been overexposed, rather he was appropriately exposed.

Stage Three: Saturation and Overexposure
In any novel, movie, play, or some narrative drama, the protagonist must experience conflict. Somewhere along the way during Florida’s triumphant run to the national title (over Oklahoma), an anti-Tebow sentiment began brewing nationally and the protagonist, Tebow, had his conflict. It’s pretty easy to diagnose why this happened, because it’s how it always happens. People (non-Florida fans in this case) grow weary of hearing about how great a guy is. It doesn’t matter if the guy is actually great or not; as people hear the same message over and over again, they begin to feel fatigued. They get tired of hearing about the virtues of someone perhaps because it’s a reminder of how un-virtuous we all are and perhaps because we live in a cynical world and think, “Look, nobody is that perfect.” It’s probably a bit of both and probably a bit of this: “I’ve heard this already, why do I need to hear it again?” And that’s the fatigue issue. The national media tends–scratch that–the national media does cover events assuming that the viewer has never heard a particular backstory before; but so many people who watch these sporting events (e.g. the national title game) know the backstory and have heard it repeated again and again. Hence, fatigue. Too many people fawned over Tebow. Too many stories had been written about him. He had given too many interviews. His story turned into one of those human-interest stories that they show during the Olympics to give you a reason to care for the competitor you’re just about to see compete. Like those puff pieces, Tebow’s story was interesting to begin with, then it got old, and then they kept coming… and with Thom Brennamen’s embarrassing, over-laudatory comments during the Oklahoma game, people had had enough:

Stage Four: Backlash
As much as Tebow was revered early in his career as a “winner” possessing all of the “intangibles” of great leaders, he is now dealing with the scornful eye of NFL analysts tearing apart his NFL QB attributes. Things that never really mattered before, such as his mechanics, are being called into question. They didn’t matter because he was years away from facing scrutiny because the NFL was not imminent. It is now. I’m one of the guys who said that I didn’t believe he had what it took to be an NFL QB, or at least not a good one. I detailed that here and I stand by those sentiments.

But here’s the thing, just as we experienced an adulation saturation point with him and his virtues became overexposed, we will now go the other direction. We will now grow weary of the world tearing him down. We will be tired of hearing Mel Kiper or Todd McShay talk about Tebow’s “release point,” and “inability to take snaps from under center.” We will now hear things like, “Come on, man, the guy is a winner, he’ll find a way to make it work in the NFL. There are all kinds of QBs who have unorthodox throwing motions, and they’re successful.”

It’s a cycle. It repeats and repeats and repeats. Which leads us to…

Stage Five: Redemption
Tebow will be drafted, and he’ll be drafted on the first day, probably late in the first round or sometime in the second round. There is zero chance that some team won’t give him a chance. He will make a team’s roster and we’ll see what happens to him. His redemption could take many forms. It could be that his only redemption is that he’s drafted high in the NFL Draft, but finds out that he’s not good enough, and that he becomes irrelevant. Or it could be that he finds redemption by being the starting QB for a championship team. We can’t know that now. But I do know that he will be redeemed. That’s just how the story works.

Analogous Themes
I read something interesting yesterday on Bruce Feldman’s blog. He talked to two guys with varying stances on Tebow. One was Daniel Jeremiah, a former Baltimore scout who now runs MoveTheSticks.com, who does not believe Tebow will be a starting QB in the NFL; the other view is from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, who believes Tebow will have a chance to make it. Here is Wickersham’s take:

There are too many unknown variables. Nobody knows where he’ll be picked, or what pressure he’ll be under to play immediately. Nobody knows who his coach will be, or the level of his surrounding talent. That stuff matters, more than many I-told-you-so scouts want to admit.

The knocks against Tebow — that he has a slow release, doesn’t read defenses quickly, and played in an offense that doesn’t translate to the pros — are the same things scouts once said about Steve Young and Mark Brunell, the two quarterbacks most analogous to Tebow. Those guys had great college careers and were panned before coming into the pros. They were lucky to be drafted by quarterback gurus (Bill Walsh and Mike Holmgren) who believed in them and invested in their success. Despite what many close-minded scouts will lead you to believe, a quarterback can actually, you know, improve in the pros.

The Tebow of today will not be the Tebow of 2013, if he enters the right situation. I’m not advocating Tebow as a top-10 pick — or even a first-rounder. He’s got potential, and you can’t dismiss him so quickly. If Tebow is drafted by an open-minded quarterback guru like Mike Shanahan, Norv Turner, Bill Belichick or Josh McDaniels — a patient teacher who will make Tebow his pet project — how can you believe any scout who says he doesn’t have a chance to turn out?

I hear what Wickersham’s saying; of course he’s not a finished product yet. But he’s being a little too casual about Tebow’s shortcomings. He’s essentially saying that Tebow’s ability to throw the ball–a pretty big deal for an NFL quarterback–is not really that important because he can learn to throw better. How is that different from drafting an NBA shooting guard with outstanding athleticism, great defensive presence, but who shoots an appalling 20 percent from beyond the arc? It’s like drafting a shooting guard who can’t shoot. It’s like throwing Ashton Kutcher into a movie because he’s good looking, but can’t act.

Tebow is a lot like Jason Kidd. Excellent is several phases of the game, but woefully deficient in one. Except the big problem with that analogy is that Kidd is a point guard and doesn’t need to be able to shoot while Tebow is a quarterback who needs to be able to throw.

Tebow backers, or those who are sick of hearing all of the negatives about him, are quick to defend him and say that whatever mechanical shortcomings he has can be fixed. Maybe. But ask yourself this: if you’re right-handed, how easy do you think it would be for you to start brushing your teeth with your left hand? Muscle memory is a tough thing to break. Handedness is not actually a fair comparison, so let’s think about a somewhat different, albeit insane, comparison. Let’s say that someonen punched you in the face every day of your adult life, only you don’t know who is going to punch you and you don’t know when, you just know that it’s going to happen at some point during the day. So let’s say you’re in the mall and you’re trying on shoes and you notice someone coming toward you with his fist raised. What do you do? You react by flinching, trying to block the punch, whatever. The point is you’re programmed to react to this stimuli, your muscle memory tells you to react this certain way. In a roundabout way, this is Tebow and his throwing mechanics. He has a certain reaction everytime he cocks his arm to throw. He does it a certain way. To break that is going to take an extraordinary amount of time and no one knows what the result will be.